Terrill Esposito raises Animal Welfare Approved laying hens and dairy goats in Loganville, Georgia. Terrill grew up helping her friends on their family farms, but it wasn’t until 2004 that she established Legacy Alpaca Farm outside Atlanta. Ten years earlier, she saw a tiny ad in the back of a magazine on an airplane for the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association and began amassing books, articles and knowledge about raising these South American fiber animals.

When Terrill, who grew up in Holland and knew how good farm-fresh eggs were, became fed up with not-good eggs, she added Araucana, White Orpington and Rhode Island Red laying chickens to the farm. When two mixed Nubian dairy goats needed a home, she took them on as well. Chickens were a way to bring fertility onto the farm, produce healthy food for donation and make a small profit from some sales as well. The goats, while unexpected rescues, will someday allow her to make goat’s milk soap and provide milk for friends who can’t drink cow’s milk.

With multiple species to manage, Terrill is proud of the constant, hands-on care and awareness that she gives her animals, which has kept all of her animals free from the health problems that often plague conventional operations. Receiving Animal Welfare Approved certification for her goats and chickens was an opportunity to learn more, improve her practices and do better. The label lends its formidable reputation, assuring her customers that she is employing the high-welfare standards that AWA requires, like the rotational pasture grazing that Terrill proudly practices.

With the help of her husband Michael, who does his fair share of poop scooping and egg collecting, Terrill enjoys her life on the farm and with the animals, as well as food, wine, and reading.